Angel Fire - Lisa Unger [104]
She shoved the gun in the waistband of her pants and reached again for Juno, her leg beginning to throb, a feeling of lightheadedness overtaking her. The only thing she wanted more than to kill Bernard Hugo, was for Juno to live. She fought dizziness and the ardent desire to go back and put a bullet through Hugo’s brain, as she dragged Juno toward the door.
She looked behind her to see if the door was blocked by flames and when she turned to look at Hugo again, he was gone.
“Fuck!” she yelled, panic and anger doing battle in her mind.
She struggled to move faster, Juno seeming heavier by the second. The door was ten feet away.
He came at her horribly through the smoke, the scalpel jutting from his eye, bellowing in rage and pain. She deftly moved to one side and he stampeded past her, tripping over Juno and falling, the scalpel driving farther into his head.
And she was on him, gun drawn. She flipped him over and straddled him, one knee on each of his arms. She stuck the barrel of the gun in his mouth. He was not dead. He struggled for breath, his nose broken and his mouth full of steel. She tried not to smile. She didn’t think anymore about the fire or the debris beginning to fall around them.
“You miserable, cocksucking psychopath,” she said. She had forgotten about the flames, about Juno lying unconscious. It was only her and him. The room seemed to wail with sound and fill with light. Everything warped and slowed around her. The only thing she knew in that moment was rage. It was a rage that had been born the day her mother died, and had dwelled within her, growing like a parasite all these years. Today, she realized, was the fifteenth anniversary of her mother’s death. And this thing inside her had devoured every happiness that was ever offered to her, had sucked every possible moment of peace and joy from her heart. And it had led to her being here, straddling a monster in a burning church, holding a gun to his mouth. If she pulled the trigger, she would put an end to him and the havoc he’d visited upon her, and have revenge for his victims. But what would she be, then? Would she destroy the worm that was eating away at her inside or would she become what she most feared and hated?
“That’s enough, Lydia.”
And she looked up to see her mother standing before her. She looked for Juno and he was gone.
“You came home early because I got caught smoking,” Lydia said, sobbing and thrusting the gun harder into Hugo’s mouth. “He killed you because I did something wrong.”
“He was waiting for her, Lydia. If it hadn’t been that afternoon, it would have been another time. It had nothing to do with you or what you did. Jed McIntyre was sick and so is Bernard Hugo.”
But then it wasn’t her mother at all, it was Jeffrey. Morrow stood behind him, and the flames were almost out. And she could see the flashing lights from police cars and fire engines through the thinning smoke.
“I want this to be over now,” she said, coughing from the smoke.
“Just give me the gun, baby. You stopped him. This is finished and we can go home.”
She let the gun drop to the floor and Jeffrey came to her and lifted her away from Bernard Hugo. He carried her from the church to the ambulance waiting outside.
epilogue
Six months later—Hanalei Bay, Kauai, Hawaii
When the bright morning sun and roosters wake Lydia from sleep here it takes her a few moments to remember where she is. She looks out the window to see mystical green mountains rising from a crystalline ocean, the mist rolling in as if from heaven. And sometimes it takes her longer to remember who she is. It’s like that here, where perfect, temperate days run together and the sound of the ocean and Jeffrey’s breathing beside her are a lullaby. Lydia Strong made it through fifteen years without knowing peace. Now that she has found it, she can’t imagine how she survived.
Recovery has been slow for Lydia. Her physical wounds healed quickly.